While there are some incredible Pokemon evolutionary chains out there, there are a handful in the Pokedex that don’t make any sense at all.
There are over 1,000 Pokemon in existence at the time of writing. Some of them are powerful and intimidating, some of them are cute and cuddly, and others are just downright weird. The same can be said for Pokemon evolutionary chains, too.
There are some Pokemon evolution chains that make a lot of sense. Turtwig evolving into Grotle and then into Torterra is a logical move – they’re all grass-themed tortoises/turtles, getting slightly bigger as they evolve and growing more foliage on their shells as they go.
Even sillier evolutions like Litwick evolving into increasingly bigger chandeliers feels right, too. But why on earth was Alomomola not introduced as an evolution for Luvdisc? There are some seriously similar single-stage Pokemon that could do with being linked together.
Plenty of Pokemon have had evolutions introduced in later generations (like Crobat, for example) and it’s a great way to add some cohesiveness in between two similar, single-stage Pokemon. Some of the single-stage ‘mons are great as standalones, but others would benefit from a new form being added in the next generation of Pokemon.
The variety of Pikachu look-alikes that now exist in Pokemon must be fairly confusing for new players trying to understand evolution chains, too. This topic was echoed by the community on Reddit with some finding Plusle and Pikachu to be far too similar, thinking Plusle was the pre-evolution of Pikachu.
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It’s an understandable confusion – Pokemon like Plusle and Minun or even Morpeko undoubtedly share some similarities to Pikachu, but they’ve got no actual proximity to the original electric mouse.
Another example mentioned in the thread above is Yanma and Flygon. If you’re unfamiliar, Trapinch evolves into Vibrava which then evolves into Flygon. Yanma arguably looks immensely similar to Flygon, though, so a cross-generational evolution would’ve made a lot of sense.
Evolution is a wonderful mechanic in the world of Pokemon, but it’s hard to deny that some of the existing evolutionary chains is downright silly. This has been the case since the first generation of Pokemon and it’s unlikely we’ll see this changing in the future.
It will be interesting to see which evolutions hit the ground running with the release of Pokemon Legends Z-A, though – especially with the reintroduction of Mega Evolutions. Megas are always a hot topic in the Pokemon community and Legends Z-A has the opportunity to introduce some creative gems.